The Home Secretary publicly distorted British case law for political gain. If it was not intended as an attack on the judiciary, there’s only one other conclusion to the cause of Theresa May’s “Claws IV moment”…

Alas I cannot lay claim to that joke, it has been doing the rounds. Joke as it may be however, it does point to something much more serious and dangerous. For Theresa May to stand up and say in front of the country, and I am not making this up, that the Human Rights Act stopped a man being deported because of his pet cat, highlights one important thing above all else.

We are being governed by morons.

I am unsure if CCHQ is still spinning furiously to counter the truth as they were yesterday or if they have accepted that Theresa May was in fact making it up, likely off the back of a sensationalist newspaper article. Perhaps they’re blaming sloppy drafting (as with today’s Cameron-Credit-Card debacle) or the unseasonable warm weather. What they should be blaming however, is severe collective stupidity.

Theresa May read that speech and signed off on it, saying “yes, I will put my name to that”.

Theresa May’s special adviser/s will have read that speech and signed off on it, saying that it was politically sound.

Theresa May’s PPS, speech writers and private office will have read the speech and signed off on it, saying that it was accurate.

CCHQ’s communications leads will have read the speech and signed off on it, saying it was on message.

No doubt others would have been similarly prepped on the speech, considering the amount of clearing a public speech requires.

And yet not a single person, not one, said “hang on, this sounds like bollocks”.

Because it is. Of course it’s bollocks. There’s nothing in the Human Rights Act that grants an inalienable right to have a pet cat*. Similarly, statutory health and safety regulations don’t require all children to have sufficient protective clothing and goggles before playing conkers. Bollocks, the lot of it.

I presume the origins of this story came from perhaps the Express with its unhappiness about all those immigrants and “ethnic numbers”, or even the Mail on one of its anti-EU kicks and “isn’t it just ridiculous that you can’t say ‘golliwog’ these days”. Still, as irritating as it is reading about how human rights are POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD, the newspapers owe us comparatively nothing. If the Mail chooses to infect the world with misleading bile that is not only devoid of human empathy but also promotes the misuse of statistics all in the aim of furthering their business model of maintaining an unhealthy level of fear and irrationality within their readership thereby damaging any real prospect of societal cohesion and ensuring further material for their ongoing campaign of hate all in the pursuit of profit regardless of its impact on actual individuals and then in further insult to our collective intelligence attempts to package their so-called journalism which is clearly no more than tabloid sensationalism into something with the pretence of being aimed at a higher market despite knowingly appealing to the lowest common denominator and their base prejudices and thus damaging the very fabric of the nation they so proudly claim to love and defend, then they are free to do so. Our elected officials and public servants on the other hand, have a duty to do “research” and back up their claims with a thing called “evidence”. The truth is that too often these speeches wouldn’t pass the credible source test if they were submitted as school essays, or would be accompanied on Wikipedia with a litany of “[citation needed]”.

This isn’t the first time the Conservatives have shown themselves up for their lack of attention to detail. Before the election, nobody at Millbank noticed that their leaflets repeatedly claimed that 54% of girls under 18 fell pregnant (the actual figure was 5.4%). Michael Gove’s cancelling of the Building Schools for the Future program was a hokey-cokey of a cancellation (“you put a Sandwell school in, a Sandwell school out, in out in out and shake everybody’s confidence…”), and of course this year Ken Clarke went on a radio programme to be interviewed on rape sentencing whilst not being adequately briefed on what constitutes rape under the law (In fairness to Ken’s people though, it’s entirely possible that this lack of preparation was just Ken Clarke being Ken Clarke, but still…). The less said about the Coulson fiasco the better, and last year’s debacle about child benefit and higher rate taxpayers could have been spotted a mile off by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of taxation and benefits. All of these incidents build into a mountain of evidence that points to a government led by fools with such a loose grip on reality to see what is obviously bollocks when they see it. Idiots with such a cavalier attitude to their jobs and duties that they would run slap-dash to the PR machine before checking their work properly. Imbeciles who actually take tabloid journalism at face value. For all the criticisms levelled at the current cabinet, professional politicians they certainly aren’t. This lot are rank amateurs.

Politics is not to be taken lightly. It permeates every aspect of our lives and the decisions and actions in Westminster et al will ripple across the land and throughout the generations. Those in politics therefore shoulder a heavy burden, and so it is important that these people are intelligent and remain ever vigilant when it comes to what they say and do. If you are unable to do the work necessary, and that includes checking speeches for bollocks, get out of politics. Perhaps go shout at some clouds. It’s high time we had people in power who took their work seriously enough to pay it the proper attention and reverence.

*For those interested in the actual case law: IA/14578/2008. The only relevance of the cat was that the man and his girlfriend purchasing a cat together was given as evidence (amongst other things) of a genuine relationship and not a sham-for-visa type affair. ‘Twould appear that the only flaw is the judge’s perhaps inappropriate use of humour at point 7. Perhaps, as with “There’s no money left”, Conservatives have no sense of humour.

May’s comment probably got through the walls of checks because they were desperate for an appeal to the Daily Express readership and the cheaper the appeal, the better. The Conservatives are a mess right now, they got scared by not winning an outright majority and now they’re chasing every vote from every angle. It can’t sustain itself, a government with Clarke as Justice Secretary and May at the Home Office cannot hope to create a consistent message let alone policy.

Ed Miliband is not good enough to win the next election but the Conservative party are just bad enough to lose it.